Stephens County Project Updating Speed Zones

Stephens County is looking at updating speed limits on a number of county roads.

Last Tuesday, the county heard from Keith Canup, who has been assisting the county with a number of road projects.

Canup spoke to the commission about 26 speed zones that he has finalized for review.

According to Canup, this effort stems from a project to update signage.

“It is a federally funded project,” said Canup. “The state has that under contract.”

He said to get the new signage, the county has to do a study to update speed limits on the roads.

Canup said that to perform the study, he has to take numerous measurements of all facets of the roads being studied and also run radar on the roads.

He then determines what is called the 85th percentile speed, which is the national guideline for the speed at which most people see a road as being safe and reasonable.

In other words, anything under the 85th percentile speed would not be considered speeding.

Canup said that in some cases, keeping proposed speed limits as close as possible to the 85th percentile speed requires proposing increases in those speed limits.

He went on to say that in some cases, he cannot meet what the state recommends.

“The state has told me I have to keep all the speeds I recommend within five percent of the 85th percentile speed,” said Canup. “I find that hard to do. Some of them are not within five miles an hour.”

County officials said that going through this project would allow the Sheriff’s Office to do radar speed enforcement on these roads.

However, it will also allow the county to get new road signage for the roads that end up on this list.

Canup said he is working on more roads to add to this that would provide signage for a large portion of the county.

“When we finish these two projects, we will have signs up on 50 percent of our roads,” said Canup.

County commissioners unanimously approved the 26 proposed speed zones Canup proposed on Tuesday.

He says before anything is finalized, the work must be reviewed and approved by an engineer and the state as well, so for the time being, there are no changes in any speed limits.